Mr. O’Ryan, certainly you value SEMME’s efforts

“Hi, I’m Bart O’Ryan, and I’m here to point out that SEMME’s operating procedure makes little sense and is stupidly cruel, and that it really only makes sense as the paper-thin backdrop to foregrounded personal dramas.”

I think it’s rather brilliant. What O’Ryan is going on about is truly indefensible, no matter what kind of spin you put on it. In fact, trying to give it a positive spin can come off as callous and intelligence-insulting. Rather, they sent in the young, sweet and pretty all-American girl who stood up to the brown rogue agent in a dramatic fight to be bullied on-air by an abrasive journalist. Semme’s dubious methods’ exposure will come second to the sympathetic outrage for Joyce’s treatment.

but then you have parents asking about your job and why can’t you get time off for your dear mother’s birthday, she misses you SO MUCH and you’ll regret spending so much time on the job are you serious they don’t have paid maternity/paternity leave and why can’t I call you at work your boss is being unreasonable

I mean, where the hell did he get this list? “Hello, I’m conducting a survey. Did you happen to have a child who went missing between the years of 1980-2000?”? That would surely include thousands of kids who had nothing to do with SEMME….

I’ve generally been inclined to think of Squad 128 as well-meaning would-be heroes, most of whom were abducted and pressganged into working for an inept and corrupt villainous organization called SEMME SEMMF by the likes of Professor Doc and whoever else is responsible. Big Boss and Big Boss II (Linda) are somewhat complicit, and probably some other yet-unseen figures deciding how this whole racket.

So basically people like, say, Walky, or even Sal are sympathetic figures, despite their (mostly understandable!) failings (…murdering Anti-Joyce was a little extreme, and attempted omnicide was a little much, but, they were inappropriately put into bad situations that led them to those bad decisions), while the higher-ups of SEMME are not as much (although the extent to which they had freedom of choice about how to proceed here is fuzzy, it seems likely they had more and better options before resorting to this kind of awfulness).

Bart O’Ryan doesn’t seem like a super nice guy, but he has some degree of a point. However, he seems to be failing to assign lower blame to the abducted minors than to their abductees.

And all this is without even getting into Head Alien’s own death-antics!